Crazy
by dropout-ninja
Summary: A psychologist tried to pioneer the new frontier before any of the others could. He wasn't cut out for it.


_Transformers Animated and its characters do not belong to me. All rights go to their respective owners._

_Warnings: None, other than mentioned spoilers from TFA season 3._

_Contains references to IDW._

* * *

"And then-and then-" the man continued to whine as he waited on his new drink, "I just can't believe any of it. What a disaster. They shouldn't have been -that- whacked. And I'm not shupposed to say anyone is whacked." The man nodded to himself vigorously before looking down into his empty glass.

"That's not part of how I was trained. 'Everyone has it in them', you know, 'all you have to do is make them recognize what their cognitive processing flaws are'. Make them feel 'safe' and, and, all that. So I shouldn't go out and admit these guys were, were, _nuts_ and all, but really, man, they just could make any shane person need to get away and get a drink-"

"Carl!" a surprised voice interrupted his monologue. The man turned from the counter and scanned the room.

"Oh hey Marge," he replied in a glum voice, "What are you here for?"

The woman slid into one of the tall round seats next to his. She smoothed down her jacket and looked him over. Carl shot a self conscious glance down at his own wrinkled sweats. It wasn't like fashion had really been his focus when he had gotten home. No, that had been getting in something comfortable, sleeping for a day and then hitting a bar before it was even happy hour.

"Stanley told me you were here," she answered him, "I thought you'd be out bragging to any press that would listen yesterday and instead I didn't hear a thing about you."

Stupid roommates, Carl thought to himself as he looked down at a still empty cup, they spill everything.

"Nope, no thank you," he laughed, "I didn't need any more headaches yesterday."

"So you traded it for a headache later when you're sober?" Marge cocked an eyebrow at him, only turning to order when the bartender gave Carl his new drink and asked her what she was there for.

"Anyway, I came here to relax. What are you doing here trying to get drunk for?" she asked.

Carl turned away from her stare with a grimace, "The entire idea was a wreck." Besides him, Marge looked surprised.

"Really? I thought is sounded like a good idea," she told him, setting aside her own beer to discover how Carl's "master plan" had failed.

"Well, in theory. In execution..."

First things first, just getting permission and then details worked out was a huge pain. Sure, it had been ten years since the big battle in Detroit that made the news around the world. And in all that time, all sorts of other visits had been dealt with that paved the way for what Carl Relda intended to do. He liked his plan just because it got himself on another planet. Not everyone could say they had done that in their lives after all. The planet itself just happened to, you know, not be too friendly to organics. That was ok. There had apparently been big steps during the ten years that the fire truck from Detroit had become the head honcho on his home planet. And by getting to be a "Magnus", he got to change some rules around. There were many details. Stories on how genius Isaac Sumdac's daughter had caused mass panic over there, stories about some sort of combined robot/biological thingies, etc. They weren't all that important to Carl's own story he was telling his friend Marge. After ten years, all that was old news. The many visits between Earth's leaders were old news. The open communication and opening tourism industries were old news.

Carl's visit was the new news. He had spent a few months doing paperwork, going to classes to prepare for his visit, meeting some of his guides. It had been all excitement at first despite all the fighting to get it to happen. Carl wanted to go to the planet Cybertron. He wanted to interview some of its famous inhabitants and write his own reports on them. It wouldn't matter if he'd only finished school two years prior. It had been his dream for years to be one of the first, if not the first, psychologist to get a look at the alien mind. With the amount of other careers that had gotten their looks at the alien planet and the classes both planets held for interested lucky inhabitants, it wouldn't be impossible to get over there. Carl had waited years for it to be his turn to be lucky.

And then he discovered what a pain it was going to be to realize this dream. The organic phobia that the news sugarcoated to make seem as if it was gone was definitely _not_ gone. That had been annoying to discover. Carl couldn't help but feel insulted as he was dwarfed by giants that weren't even acknowledging that he, to, was a professional. Just because he was centuries younger than them didn't mean he was an idiot or something.

The good news for him was that there was a cybertronian interested in helping him out. The less good news was that this specific cybertronian didn't seem super respected by his peers. And kinda got on Carl's nerves, no offense to the guy. But with this Rung's help he at least got a green light and someone to help him find people to interview.

"It was such a pain to get in," he complained, "That crazy little bot was the only reason it all happened. Or little by their standards." Carl gave up motioning with his hands to signify shortness and brought them around his drink instead.

"Well, so you got in," his companion said, "I already knew that. Tell me the juicy details of what you saw!"

"I tried to start with the easy ones," Carl bemoaned.

Marge leaned her head to the side. "And?"

"Well, those ones went fine, I guess," he shrugged, "They could fit in with any of an average LMFT's patients here if they weren't stories tall and metal. I guess I got a little too confident after them. So the first three guys, they were pretty easy to figure out. Typical ptsd. Looks about the same in a cybertronian as it does in a human. I could use everything I had in my human manuals to work with what I saw of them."

Carl had been introduced to the mech by Rung, who stayed throughout the interview. To start the venture, he was able to talk to some of the team that had been in Detroit. Not Optimus, since he would probably get the time to after Carl had died of old age. Not Bulkhead since he was, during the time the psychologist had been there, similarly busy. So instead, he got to see Ratchet, Bumblebee and Jazz.

The medical bot was easy to diagnose (not that he actually was giving out any sort of official diagnosis, that was not something he had any sort of authority for. Afterall, he was a human scientist just trying to see what similarities existed with a cybertronians processor and personality, while understanding he couldn't assume all the same diagnosing rules applied to the aliens). It seemed similar enough to post traumatic stress disorder. The flashbacks, the unwanted memories, the avoidance, the irritability, isolation, startle reactions, hyper-vigilance, the reported self-blame he heard about from the others, etc. Walking out of that, he was feeling pretty good about this whole thing. It was amazing to be interviewing real live aliens and not be feeling overwhelmed!

The next one was the younger acting yellow one. He was interesting to watch, interview and hear what the others said about him. As much as his energy suggested constant excitability, Carl suspected he had a form of ptsd as well. Both the minibot and the tall one named Jazz. Specifically, they both seemed to share a symptom of ptsd; survivor's guilt. Those interviews began to illuminate this whenever the deceased Prowl or the battle of Detroit was brought up.

"That couldn't be why you're here," Marge looked unimpressed, "You've worked with plenty of messed up humans and you went there in order to see messed up bots."

"No, it just became such a headache after that," Carl shrugged, "See, after a few cases like those ones Rung decided to let me see what they actually find more concerning compared to ptsd among bots that have been in wars for years. And after a few, they took me to shome scienshy building where they'd been working on these four really ten year old bots. Working as in trying to get them even fractionally more sane."

This was where Carl started to realize that the aliens were, well, alien. You wouldn't find ten year old humans with problems this dramatic, especially not ones that had been 'adults' since their creations. And were all clones of each other to boot. That alone wouldn't be seen in humans, which didn't even address that each one took one or two symptoms from a disorder and then _overblew_ it to be _everything_ they were. According to Rung and some of the other doctors, they were all doing much better now. Still were too dramatically invested in whatever trait they had been cloned from (and that was, once again, definitely not something he would ever face with a human patient. Talk about taking the nature part of nature/nurture to an extreme). Carl was hesitant to ask how they used to be then. Instead of mood, anxiety, other such categories, he was now delving into the personality disorders of cybertronians. It was pioneering a new frontier and Carl Relda was proud of that. Despite how much of a headache he proceeded to get, he was still proud of what he did. And, despite those headaches, he was as fascinated with what he saw as he thought he would be when he signed up for this thing.

The first guy was quite the egomaniac. Carl delved into symptoms for histrionic and narcissistic personality disorders as he watched him. Only a few symptoms from histrionic while most definitely not fitting into what most people with HPD have (lacking any of the seductive personality), so Carl focused more on narcissism. Even that didn't seem quite right, although that was more because according to the staff he was a living incarnation of his creator's ego, not someone who had developed a human disorder. But this 'TC' as the nameless clone had been dubbed by the staff wasn't too different from anything Carl had prepared for. Sure, he got annoying but Carl worked with annoying people. So he interviewed the _obviously far superior than him_ bot and then watched from the other room how his interactions with Rung went. With his preliminary notes completed on TC he was taken to the next one.

Listening to the first one talk about how unworthy he was had been better to listening to the second one talk about just how worthy he was. Being a pathological sycophant was nowhere in his newest edition ICD. So Carl just worked with what he could and took notes instead of attempting many diagnostics. This Sunstorm had very little self-esteem (but decent self-efficacy based on everyday hobbies), so at least Carl could put that down alongside his notes on being a complete bootlicker (in more professional terms of course). So he left the bot's words about his magnificent intelligence followed him out the door, stumped on what to say for the clone.

The third one had to be sweet-talked from his hiding place into the open by Rung. Instead of being at a loss for which one disorder Sunstorm could qualify for, Carl had no issue with getting _one_ diagnosis for Skywarp. More like most of the anxiety disorders. GAD, phobias, panic disorder, all of them were in this guy. The phobias were the hardest part. Mainly because he seemed to have a phobia for everything. The really tall loud doctor? Check. The smaller quiet Rung? Check. The tiny organic? Check. All were just so terrifying. After a rather unproductive interview, and then a much better interview done by Rung that Carl watched from outside, he left. At least with the other cybertronian, the clone managed to talk about something other than terror.

Finally, he was brought to the last one. Who immediately denied his name when he was introduced to Carl. That set the tone for the rest of the interview. Ramjet lied. He spoke in a way that actually got his point across, which was apparently the progress the staff was so happy with. Didn't deny that everything he said was false. No other sort of mental problems seemed to show themselves in the interviews. He didn't have anything else. Just lying. Nothing but lying, actually. In humans, that wouldn't really exist. Pathological liars usually had some sort of other disorder that the lying was a symptom of. At the very least it was consistent.

"Alright, are you ready to go?" Rung had asked after he had finished up all his notes on Ramjet.

He was ready to get away from those four for sure. But then he was brought through customs, and security, and carried to some cell and-

"This is Blitzwing," Rung explained. For any familiar with the different battles in Detroit and the members of either side, that should be enough said.

"How did his head even work like that?" Carl groaned, "It looks so much like it's shpinning around but that can't be right, that's not how any of the others do their little transforming thingies. Literal multiple personalities, physical personalities, not the dissociative personality disorder we see in our patients."

"Who did you look at after that one? Those three?" Marge shook her head in a momentary confusion over the correct wording.

"No one," he replied, "I had enough of a headache by then and had enough samples to make thesis with. You can't look at them with just our manuals, doesn't work out. 'Cause they got their own load of problems that would never really show up on a human. And here I've been taught that almost every disorder can be defeated by the patient recognizing the mental inconsistencies and trust in the therapist. Not gonna happen with those five."

The man just shook his head with a bemused smile. Marge pursed her dark pink lips as her eyes narrowed in thought.

"So are you going to fight any of us back when we try to get in this new program?" she asked, "Both Stanley and I want to go and last time we tried to sign up you went all nuts on keeping us out."

"Nope," Carl giggled, "Go ahead, all of you! Give it a shot! Me, I'm done for a while. With that vensthure. Not done with that drink though so shtop it." Marge stopped trying to pull the half empty cup away with a roll of the eyes.

* * *

_Carl Relda's name is a shoutout to Carl Rogers and Alfred Adler, both famous psychologists. Marge's name is a shoutout to Margaret Floyd Washburn and Stanley's name is a shoutout to Stanley Milgram, both of which also famous figures in psychology._

_Thank you for your time!_


End file.
